00:00years of time.
00:11Now, whenever we scratch the surface, a glimpse of prehistory is revealed.
00:18Here, where the diggers now scoop the last lignite out of the ground,
00:23virgin forests once lined a long coastline.
00:31Slumbering beneath the lignite are tons of amber, frozen in time within it,
00:37the life of the ancient forests.
01:10The island up from the depths of the Baltic Sea.
01:15The chalk was formed in the dinosaur age, from the tiny lime shells of plankton.
01:21Under the pressure of the glaciers, this material grew to become the distinctive chalk cliffs.
01:36The warm period covered the chalk with a thin layer of plant matter.
01:41The roots of the plants clinged to the soft substratum.
01:44Without this protective covering, the surf and rainfall would have long since washed the island away.
02:18The End
02:20At the end of the last ice age, the climate warmed up very quickly.
02:24The forest returned, and along with it, the animals we still know today.
02:37The people, who up until this time had been nomadic hunter-gatherers,
02:41now began to settle and shape their environment.
02:54But as human civilization took its baby steps, entirely new conflicts arose.
03:15Wildlife was no longer just a food source.
03:19For a farmer tending her fields at the dawn of agriculture, deer were pests to be driven off.
03:30For the hunters, the farmers and their fields were alien intruders.
03:35They chopped down the forests and disrupted the hunting grounds.
03:47Agriculture, however, won through in the end.
03:50With what is known as the Neolithic Revolution, mankind began a targeted campaign of adapting nature to its own needs.
04:00Villages and later cities were built, and the population grew apace.
04:05Because people were no longer dependent on what they could hunt and gather, but could now produce their own nutrition.
04:17The wildlife avoided human settlements, retreating ever deeper into the forests.
04:32Today's broad, open marshland habitat, on the other hand, offers little protection.
04:38But it is here that migratory birds gather each year to start their journey south.
04:45The flat, almost treeless land provides a good view for predatory birds, such as the marsh harrier,
04:52who aim to take full advantage of the situation before the summer guests move on.
04:57When temperatures have dropped, and the migratory birds have flown off on their way,
05:03things go quiet on the North Sea coast, the world's largest marshland area.
05:08The play seems...
05:35Mankind repeatedly carves out a place for itself.
05:38in nature. Until the early 19th century, wood was the most commonly used material
05:44and practically the only heating material. Entire regions were deforested. By this
05:53time, the bears were almost all gone.
06:12Since the Middle Ages, the forest had been used as a grazing pasture and the leaves blanketing
06:19the forest floor were cleared to use as straw in the stalls of livestock. Wood and charcoal
06:26supplied the energy to fire the ovens of the salt, iron and glass industries.
06:36More and more charcoal burners and piles were set up to produce wood charcoal, huge amounts
06:44of which was needed to feed the booming nascent industries. Where wood supplies ran low, communities
06:51and cities passed laws to protect the forests.
07:00Nobility II took action against the deforestation. The landed gentry laid claim to huge forest areas
07:08and took measures for forest and wildlife conservancy. But not from ecological conviction. The hunting
07:15classes wanted to save their stately game reserves from destruction.
07:22Without the sport, hunting of the title toffs, the German countryside would look a lot different today.
07:37For millennia, the hunt was an existential necessity for human existence. But in the early Middle Ages, it became a
07:45privilege.
07:46Nobility passed an edict over its forests. The farmers were not only prohibited from hunting, they were not even allowed
07:54to kill the game when it was caught plundering the harvest in the fields.
08:03At that time, there was a law that revoked the land rights of the peasantry. As soon as the trees
08:09and shrubs on it grew high enough to reach a writer's spurs.
08:20Nowadays, the hunt not only serves to control the game population, it's also a popular recreational activity.
08:38Rock for rock, the stone was broken and blasted from the walls.
08:43Shipped along the Elba, the stone blocks arrived to build the walls of many magnificent sacred and stately buildings throughout
08:51the world.
09:00Elba sandstone is still quarried today and shipped to customers around the globe.
09:34The
09:36An
09:39Dresden's master builders, old and new, have eroded the Elbe Cliffs.
09:45For the reconstruction of the historic Frauenkirche, they returned once again to the old sandstone
09:52quarries.
09:53The Hamburg Town Hall is built of Elbe Sandstone, as are many other buildings in this urban
09:59landscape.
10:03The falcons brood here, as they do on the cliffs of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains.
10:21The animals have long since made themselves at home in the man-made habitat.
10:32Today's major cities are anything but hostile to life.
10:37They often offer a greater diversity of habitats than the surrounding countryside.
10:46The iconic cathedral and Rhine bridges are unmistakable landmarks of the Cologne cityscape.
11:04Tourists, floods of people, concrete and heavy traffic.
11:08You don't think of animals here.
11:11But the urban centers don't just attract human beings.
11:17Animal immigrants from across the globe have made a new home for themselves in the metropolis,
11:22adding color and variety to the scene.
11:26Our contemporary cities bring Europe's long journey of transformation to a conclusion for now.
11:37these little Kenyanites, all these buildings are completely visible in a park.
11:41A fire of the city and the horses and the horses and the horses and the horses and the horses.
12:14Our journey is over, but Europe will travel on for a long time to come.
12:20We'll never know what direction it will take in the future.
12:23Whether it will one far-off day come to rest at the North Pole or under the equatorial sun.
12:31We won't be there to see if it gets clamped between two continents and lifted way up high,
12:37torn in pieces that sink into the sea or covered by a kilometer-thick armor of ice.
12:45But one thing is certain. It will be an utterly different Europe than the one we know today.
